Bangladesh Strives to be the New ‘India’ of Art

Artists in Bangladesh see an opportunity in the art market of neighboring India: Buyers are looking at this part of the world and the Bangladeshis want to be noticed, too.

“Now people are looking at South Asian art. We think there is an opportunity and want to make the most of it,” says Nadia Samdani, the founder and director of Bangladesh’s first art summit, which kicks off later this week in Dhaka, the capital.

The Dhaka Art Summit will be a rare chance for collectors and art enthusiasts to see a wide range of work – from video installations to folk art – produced by the country’s artists under the same roof.

While India’s modern and contemporary art has drawn growing international interest in recent years, Bangladesh has lagged. Ms. Samdani hopes the event will help place Bangladeshi art on the global art map alongside India’s.

Indian art owes much of its recent success to the infrastructure set up to facilitate trade after record-breaking sales in the mid-2000s. This includes the India Art Fair, which this year attracted around 90 Indian and international galleries. While the fair acted as an important platform for Pakistani artists – Rashid Rana, famous for his large photo mosaics, was the highlight of the fair – Bangladeshi artists did not have a significant presence.

Mahbubur Rahman

A still from Mahbubur Rahman's 'Alternating gestures' (2012).

Ms. Samdani hopes that the Dhaka Art Summit, modeled on the India Art Fair, will help change the international presence of her country’s artists.

“How many people knew about Indian art a decade ago compared to now? Or even China? Then the boom came,” says Ms. Samdani. “You cannot compare Bangladesh with that but it’s a great opportunity. Because of India, because of Pakistan, because of China, the doors have opened in Bangladesh,” she adds.

She expects several international auction houses and museums, including London’s Tate Modern, to send representatives to the four-day trade fair, which opens Thursday. Around 250 independent artists also will be participating at the summit. In Bangladesh, galleries still play a minor role, so it is common for artists there to work on their own or through cooperatives.

Galleries and artists can participate free of cost at the fair, which is organized by Ms. Samdani’s family-run Samdani Art Foundation with private sponsorship and in collaboration with the government.

There are signs Bangladeshi art is attracting greater international recognition already. For several years now, Dhaka has hosted the bi-annual Chobi Mela, one of Asia’s largest photography festivals and an important stop for anyone who is interested in photojournalism. And last year, Bangladesh made its debut at the most high-profile international show of contemporary art in the world, the Venice Biennale. Artists and organizers hope that the exposure received in Venice will help attract people to Dhaka for the summit, the country’s first major platform dedicated to trade.

Tayeba Begum Lipi

An image from Tayeba Begum Lipi's 'Bizarre and Beautiful II.'

Worth noting is the Britto Arts Trust, a group run by artists that brought Bangladesh to the Venice Biennale. For Mahbubur Rahman, the artist who founded the Britto Arts Trust, the summit is above all “a big chance” for contemporary Bangladeshi artists to show their work to international collectors. Britto artists including Tayeba Begum Lipi, who presented a provocative video installation on marriage at the biennale, will be participating at the upcoming art summit.

Running parallel to the fair is a show of over 20 Bangladeshi artists curated by Mr. Rahman at Britto’s recently inaugurated space. (“We don’t say it is a gallery but a space for practicing and showcasing work," says Mr. Rahman.)

Works include Mr. Rahman's own “Alternating gestures” (2012), in which images are projected, in scale, on domestic spaces. Other works include Imran Hossain Piplu’s “Farm Fresh” (2012), weapons clad with raw meat, and “The Utopian Museum” (2011), fake fossils inspired by outdated weapons. War is a common theme in the art and photography of Bangladesh, a country where memories of the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan are still alive.